by Okey Ndibe
On the morning of 1 January 1968—the ninth day since the prime minister and his cabinet retired to the Presidential Lodge—I turned on the radio, curious to hear what Amin would say in his customary New Year’s Day address to the nation. Instead of the national anthem that traditionally preceded the prime minister’s speech, the station blared a strange funereal music, its notes sharp and piercing, its syncopation too swift. The music reminded me of the scores that, in horror movies, foreshadowed the vampire’s bloody lurch.
A voice came on the radio, rough and shaky, like a nervous drunk’s.
Fellow countrymen and women,
This is Major James Rada of the 82nd Armored Division of the Madian Army. On behalf of the Armed Forces of Madia, I inform you that a change has been made in the leadership of our country. With immediate effect, Prime Minister Askia Amin has been removed as head of the government, the Parliament has been disbanded and all existing political institutions at the local and state levels have been dissolved. All political parties will henceforth cease to exist. All local government officials are hereby directed to report to the police station nearest to them. With immediate effect all national authority will reside with the Armed Forces Revolutionary and Redemptive Council.
The prime minister and most members of his cabinet have been placed under arrest pending possible prosecution on charges of contributing to the economic adversity and political turmoil of the Federal Republic of Madia.
Fellow citizens, we have all been witnesses to the escalating acts of irresponsibility and corruption exhibited by the political classes. The ordinary citizen has lost all confidence in the institutions of governance; the state and national treasuries have been bankrupted by politicians for their own profit; and the moral fabric of this nation has been torn apart.
The Armed Forces of Madia have watched with increasing sadness and anxiety as the situation developed to crisis point. It was with the greatest reluctance but out of a sense of patriotic duty that we decided to seize the reins of power in order to avert any further deterioration.
Anybody, or group of people, who in any way challenges the authority of the Armed Forces Revolutionary and Redemptive Council will be summarily dealt with. Fellow countrymen and women, you are advised to stay tuned and await further announcements and instructions. Long live the Federal Republic of Madia.
Thank you.
At the end of the broadcast I found that my palms were sweaty, a formless fear awhirl in my head. I took a long cold bath. Then I put on a black T-shirt over a pair of jeans and set out to my office.
The streets were jammed. Cars blasted their horns. People embraced one another and pumped hands. Jubilant crowds chanted, “Hang Amin!” “Askia is axed!” “Down with Amin’s corruption!” “Welcome AFRRC!” Those who had not heard the broadcast huddled around any available radio set and listened to the martial music while waiting for the announcement to be repeated. Every half-hour there was a pause in the music, then the station re-broadcast Major Rada’s speech. I loathed the people’s uncomplicated reaction, the crowd’s certitude that the current development portended good. Was I alone in detecting a presentiment of terror in the officer’s tone? Was I the only one who foresaw that the coup would entail much spilling of Madian blood?
The newsroom was in a frenzied state. The chatter of reporters rose and fell against the constant clatter of typewriters. At one point in the morning one of our photographers staggered in, dripping blood, the right side of his head swollen. Shakily he told us how a group of soldiers had beaten him at a checkpoint, upset that he had taken their picture.
“What was wrong with taking their picture?” asked the news editor.
“They said I had contravened national security.”
“How? What national security?” queried the editor.
The photographer spread his hands in an uncomprehending gesture.
“Didn’t you tell them you were from the press?”
“I did. I showed them my ID.”
“And then? “
“One of them snatched it from me. Then he took out a jackknife and cut my card to pieces. He said I was a spy. They started punching and kicking me and beating me with the butts of their guns.”
“Guns?”
“Yes, their guns and fists at the same time. They threatened to take me to their barracks and shoot me right away. But then an officer appeared on the scene and ordered them to release me. He asked them to return my camera, but they had already exposed the film.”
“Take a taxi to the clinic and get yourself seen to. Then take two days off. As soon as the situation stabilizes we’ll take the matter up with the appropriate authorities.”
The photographer thanked the editor and limped away. When he was out of sight the news editor turned to me.
“These people are not allowed to bully innocent citizens.”
“Yes they are,” I said bitterly. “They have guns. And they now run this country.”
That night the photographer died in his sleep. His death provided a focus for my disparate feelings about the coup. I thought again about the people celebrating out in the streets, like children welcoming a first rainfall after a long, hard dry season. It all reminded me of a story my grandmother once told me, about the ambivalent character of rain, sustainer of the earth’s plenitude but also the harbinger of malaise.
Once upon a time, a great famine struck a remote village that was located beyond seven seas and seven wilds. The famine was caused by several years of drought that made the earth too hard to till. Horrified by the rate at which their fellows died, the villagers consulted a dibia to find out the source of their affliction. The diviner said that a sacrifice must be carried to the boundary between earth and sky. The errand must be performed by a creature nimble of foot and ample-voiced, for the journey was far and the sky was hard of hearing.
The villagers decided to send Dog. They instructed him to hasten without distraction. But Dog strayed off many times. He sniffed the air for game, joined a group of hunters he met in the forest, tarried to watch a wrestling match, traded wits with Tortoise, sang with a travelling choir of birds, danced with a troupe of gazelles. By the time he eventually arrived at the boundary, the sky had drifted off, sullen. Dog barked and barked until the sky returned.
“Here,” said Dog in a contemptuous voice. “Here is your sacrifice. Now send rain to the poor villagers!” He flung the sacrifice on the ground and turned home, looking forward to all the stops he would make on his way back to the village.
Weeks later he reached the village to find it flooded. The villagers were all dead, their corpses afloat in pools of water. It had been raining relentlessly since the day Dog insulted the sky.
“Rain has two faces,” concluded my grandmother. “It can give life, but its arrows can also cause death.”
Arrows of rain: my grandmother’s phrase for rain’s malefic face.
Late in the afternoon of the day of the coup, a reporter known for his scoops walked in and announced that he had spoken to one of the soldiers who arrested Prime Minister Amin at 2:15 a.m. Everybody abandoned their tasks and crowded around him to hear his account.
When they stormed the Presidential Lodge, the soldiers had little trouble rounding up most of their targets. The ministers and political aides sat or lay in the expansive Congress Hall where cabinet meetings were held, some of them still awake, but all hopelessly drunk. Some were naked, drained by the exhaustion of love. Two or three members of the Power Platoon attended to each minister. The officials and their women were quickly arrested and marched outside and into a truck.
Another group of soldiers paced the corridors of the Lodge looking for the prime minister. They threw doors open, peered into closets, checked under beds, searched everywhere. They ransacked two floors but found no sign of Amin. The officer in charge then ordered his men to follow him to the underground level. Approachin
g the first door, they heard ardent voices coming from the room beyond. Pausing to listen, they heard a man breathlessly saying, “Tell me when to come.” Then there was a woman’s voice: “Now, Your Excellency. Come Tiger! Come Champion! Come Emperor! Now!”
The officer pushed open the door and walked into the room followed by eight soldiers. Their entrance attracted the prime minister’s notice. He looked up and halted his thrusts, but the girl under him still wriggled her hips, too far consumed by love’s heady thrill. The prime minister’s eyes narrowed in indignation at the sight of the intruders. The officer came to attention and executed a brisk salute that was at once deferential and contemptuous.
“Mr. Prime Minister, Sir, I have instructions to affect your arrest!”
For a moment the prime minister seemed to struggle with incomprehension. Then, hit by the fact of his nakedness, he pulled the bed covers over his buttocks. In a voice that carried all the authority he could muster in the circumstances, he asked, “Who in this country has issued such instructions?”
“The AFRRC.”
“The AF what?” he enquired with fierce impatience.
“Armed Forces Revolutionary and Redemptive Council, Sir.”
“Impossible! There’s no such council.”
“Yes, there has been a coup. Your government has been removed.”
“Impossible! The people elected me. Nobody can remove me. Go and tell your revolutionary council to stand election if they want power. And by the way, protocol demands that you should address me as Your Excellency.”
“Your Excellency, I would not try to resist arrest if I were you.”
The prime minister slowly lifted himself off the girl, who seemed for the first time to recognize the awkwardness of lying in bed with a man who was losing power. Amin sat down at the edge of the bed, looked sternly at the soldiers and sighed. Then he muttered, “Only bastards would interrupt an orgasm!”
The soldiers chuckled. Their derision seemed to bring home to the prime minister the reality of his fall. Amin asked the officer for permission to make a call to the Army Chief of Staff.
The officer’s tone was curt. “He’s dead.”
“What!” cried Askia Amin.
“He was court-martialed two hours ago for colluding with your government against the interests of the Madian people.”
“What!”
“He was found guilty and was executed along with other corrupt officers in the Navy and Air Force.”
“What!”
“And even if he were still alive you wouldn’t be able to speak to him. Telephone communication was shut off when this operation began five hours ago.”
Amin pulled on his trousers. He was about to put on a shirt when the officer stopped him. “A shirt is not allowed.”
“Why not?”
“These are my instructions,” said the officer.
In a voice now full of fear Amin asked, “What are you planning to do with me?”
“I don’t know,” answered the officer. “It’s in the hands of the AFRRC.”
“Gentlemen, I’ll give you one million dollars if you let me escape.”
The officer shook his head.
“I’ll make it two million. In cash.”
One of the soldiers stepped forward with handcuffs. The prime minister pleaded with desperation.
“Five million dollars, gentlemen. If you let me go. You can say you couldn’t find me. Please!”
The officer laughed. “For the last time I ask you to cooperate with us to avoid injury to yourself.”
Trembling, Amin allowed them to put on the manacles.
Another soldier produced handcuffs for his girlfriend.
“I did nothing,” she said, sobbing. “He forced me. Please, I’m too young to die.”
“Calm down,” the officer told her. “Nobody is going to shoot you. You’ll testify against him, that’s all.” Then, as an afterthought, he addressed Amin. “Sir, about what the AFRRC might do with you. I want you to know that castration is definitely an option.”
The soldiers sniggered. In a last defiant gesture, Askia Amin lifted his face and looked into the officer’s eyes. Then he spat at the officer’s feet. The soldier who had put the handcuffs on him marched forward and slapped him twice on the face.
In the days that followed, Askia Amin and his ministers were arraigned before a special military tribunal. The trial became a carnival. Crowds thronged outside the building, chanting alleluias to the military redeemers and demanding death for Amin and his gang.
In the event the tribunal was lenient. Amin was sentenced to two life terms in prison, the cabinet members to one life term each.
Chapter Twenty-one
A day after the coup Major James Rada returned on Radio Madia and announced that Major Isa Palat Bello, just selected as the new head of state and commander-in-chief of the Madian armed forces, was about to address the nation. Hearing Bello’s name, I had the fleeting urge to laugh. Certainly, I thought, someone at Radio Madia had decided to make a ghastly joke at my expense.
The national anthem came on, dispelling my doubts. Then I heard Bello’s familiar hoarse voice.
Beloved fellow countrymen and women. Today marks an important epoch in the checkered history of our great nation . . .
My throat tightened and my head seemed to spin. “Murderer!” I cried.
The moral turpitude of the deposed government . . . their unbridled rape of the Madian people . . . financial recklessness and social anarchy . . . We now have a great opportunity for national economic and moral renewal . . .
For a while, my mind tuned in and out, dimly grasping Bello’s words. Then a cold fear crept up inside me and I was transported to the past, to the fount of terrible memories. I remembered Iyese pinned against the wall with Bello’s hand at her throat. The two pillows basted with her blood. The grotesque tranquility of her final posture, stretched out with her baby on her breast.
Bello’s voice broke in again. The government is firmly determined to deal summarily with any trouble makers . . . Terrors I could neither name nor disentangle dinned in my head. This man whose cruelty I knew so intimately now personified absolute power. And I was his enemy!
Throughout the night my body twitched, my teeth chattered. I slept only in short spurts, my rest haunted by bad dreams. The next morning there were pictures of Bello everywhere: on billboards and in shop windows, on every newspaper’s front page. Soldiers milled around the city, guns strung across their chests. Their gaze seemed to single me out and follow me. I began to avoid the streets.
One morning I woke up after a nightmarish sleep and called my office. The receptionist told me that two men had been in to see me. They had not left their names, only the message that they would return. No, she had never seen the men before. “Thank you,” I said in a voice choked with dread. “Put me through to the editor.”
I told the editor that I was very sick, that when I stood up the world seemed to spin around me. I had no need to see a doctor, I assured him; this thing had happened to me twice before. It was a sort of psychic exhaustion triggered by a rare chemical imbalance that could not be controlled with drugs. The doctor who diagnosed it several years ago had said that all I needed was to stay in bed for a few days, listen to soothing music, eat once a day (and only vegetables) and drink lots of water—nothing carbonated.
I talked without pausing, afraid that the editor might ask a question that would expose my lies, or say that he knew such and such a doctor I ought to see. Then I came to my point.
“I was wondering if I could take a week off. To rest in bed. I was told that if I didn’t get proper rest I could easily have seizures. Bad ones, or even a stroke.”
He was silent for a moment. Had he found a hole in my story? I waited, tense.
“Bloody hell,” he finally said, in his accustomed fashion. “Ta
ke two weeks.”
I gripped the handset of the phone, hardly believing my luck. For two weeks, I thought, I would be out of circulation, hidden away from the soldiers’ stabbing eyes. In my relief I did not consider the possibility that the new solitude could birth its own monsters.
At midnight I got into bed to sleep. The instant I shut my eyes the image of Major Bello stood over me, his gun aimed at the ridge of my nose. Lying on my back, I peered straight into the gun’s muzzle, dark and small. I struggled hard to erase this image from my mind. In its place came a fluttering sound and a ghost draped in a mauve veil, hovering over me. Slowly, the veil turned a dark red, became a cloud of blood, then dripped all over my bed. I watched with dread as the ghost’s form became clearer and more familiar.
“Iyese!” I shouted, jerking myself upright with a nervous impetus. The ghost was gone, merged into the opaque fabric of the night. I was alone, a heaving, terrified man.
“Iyese,” I whispered. The room was eerily quiet. I touched my bed, a pool of sweat. I turned on the light. The time was 1:03 a.m. I reached for the phone and dialed. Ola Jones, a friend from my university days, answered after seven rings. His speech was slurred with sleep. I told him who it was.
“This better be important,” he warned, “or I’ll kill somebody!”
“My life’s in danger. I must come over to your house. Immediately.”
“Can’t you wait till the morning?”
“No. I don’t know what might happen. It may be too late.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No.”
“Do.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? Why not?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there.”
“There’s a curfew in effect, you know. What if you get arrested for breaking it?”
“Your home is only two miles away. I can manage.”
